IN JANUARY 2015, Baker Books will release my latest
nonfiction work, 30 Events That Shaped
the Church. It comes on the heels of the 2014 release, 60 People Who Shaped the Church. Some are surprised to learn that I
write book-length nonfiction. True most of my books are novels but I also enjoy
and see great value in producing nonfiction books as well.

While preparing 30
Events I went through a long list of possible topics. In the end, one
chapter caught my attention and so infiltrated my mind that I’m still
researching it long after I turned the manuscript in. As I worked through the
centuries I came upon a week long event that most of us have heard of but few
of us know much about: The Scopes “Monkey” Trial of 1925. When I research I try
to keep my mind free of bias, which is a difficult thing to do. Still, I
thought I knew a fair amount about the “Trial of the Century.” I didn’t.

Part of my preparation was to watch an old movie (1960),
based on an older stage play by Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee, Inherit the Wind. I remember it being
one of the best movies ever made, made all the more memorable by actors like
Spencer Tracy and Fredric March, as well as Gene Kelly (no dancing in this
movie), and Dick York (later of Bewitched
fame) who portrayed John T. Scopes (Bertram T. Cates in the movie). This time,
I watched the movie with a critical eye and was surprised how far they had
strayed from the truth.

To be fair, Lawrence and Lee, as well as director Stanley
Kramer, went out to their way to alert viewers that they were watching a movie,
not a documentary. The movie begins with these words:

“Inherit the Wind
is not history. The events which took place in Dayton, Tennessee, during the
scorching July of 1925 are clearly the genesis of this play. It has, however,
an exodus entirely its own. [. . .] So Inherit
the Wind does not pretend to be journalism. It is theatre.”

I appreciate the honesty of the writers. Still—and this is
the problem with some types of fiction—many took the events as historical fact.
To this day, people who have seen the movie think:

William Jennings Bryan was a glutton. (He was a
diabetic on a very strict diet at the time of the trial.)

Clarence Darrow crushed Bryan’s beliefs as the
latter sat in the witness stand. (Darrow ridiculed people of faith but it had no
impact on Bryan.)

That Bryan was a buffoon. (He ran for president
three times, was a great orator, served as Secretary of State, and was a gifted
writer).

That the townspeople of Dayton wanted to hang
Scopes from a tree. (Nothing of the sort happened.)

And that Bryan died in the courtroom, the victim
of Darrow’s grueling examination and ridicule of biblical stores. (Bryan died
five days later from complications of diabetes. He remained active in the days
following the trial.)

When I was in college, my psychology professor told the
class that the human mind has trouble distinguishing between reality and
fiction. It is the reason we jump in scary movies or tear up reading a sad
scene.

All of this to say, that we as author’s of fiction need to
take care how we represent figures and events in history. Lawrence and Lee went
so far as to change the name of the characters (although they also went out of
their way to make the actors look like William Jennings Bryan and Clarence
Darrow). Despite their efforts, fifty-four years after the movie (longer for
the play the preceded it) people still think the movie is trustworthy history.

This realization puts a burden of responsibility on the
shoulders of novelists. While the novelist’s goal is to entertain, we in the
Christian market also want to edify and to do so we need to be as accurate as
we can be when portraying real people.

William Jennings Bryan’s reputation and work was sullied by
the play and later the movie, despite the authors’ and director’s efforts to
make clear their story was only loosely drawn from the real 1925 court case.
Nonetheless, many have taken the fiction and see it as fact.

We novelist take some needed liberties in our creation, but
when it involves real people from the past (or worse, vaguely disguised
characterizations of living people), then we run the risk of doing harm.

4 comments:

"Un-proving" those things which appear on the big screen - or even the smaller screen of television - is almost an exercise in futility. Although those writers knew they were perpetrating an agenda-driven "opinion" with their fictitious concoction of a real event, they knew once it was portrayed with the dynamic of a movie, their intent would be taken as probable. It's a dishonest practice and a poor example of what any writer should do with his words. Truth is a scarce commodity in any writing these days. Great post, Al.

As a Nebraskan, I was also taken back by the movie's portrayal of Bryan. Certainly not the man I studied in MY history classes. (I'd also forgotten that Henry Morgan portrayed the judge.)

I do wonder why you specify that you "in the Christian market also want to edify." Do you assume that those of us who write general historical fiction (as well as non-fiction) don't? I hope that's not the case but that, instead, you're writing your blog for Christian writers.